Contingent, a supplier insight platform aiming to make procurement easy, has raised £6.3 million in funding.
The firm says the process of procuring goods and services contains far too much friction, with companies often unaware of the potential risks accompanying their decisions.
Contingent’s mission is to empower procurement teams to make the right choices and partner more closely with the wider business.
Its real-time insights tool fits seamlessly into an organisation’s existing procurement workflow and technology ecosystem.
The round was led by Octopus Ventures with participation from Connect Ventures, Concentric, Seedcamp, Ascension and Working Capital Innovation Fund.
The company is actively looking to expand into the US and across Europe, and will be rapidly hiring into its product, engineering, and commercial teams over the coming months.
“The typical questionnaire process to onboard suppliers is widely accepted to be fundamentally broken,” said co-founder and CEO Tai Alegbe.
“A huge amount of buyer and seller time and resources are wasted in collecting information from suppliers, most of which is rarely read. It’s hard to spot risks, with companies reliant on supplier self-certification, and with no time or information to verify claims.
“Teams are then usually entirely reliant on word-of-mouth or pot luck to know if anything changes, usually finding out too late, resulting in them reacting to issues rather than being able to be proactive.
“The only antidote to this, historically, is to repeat the document collection periodically to ‘refresh’ the process. Teams want to invest their time and energy in understanding whether the product or service can meet their goals, not on whether the supplier meets internal or external requirements.”
Fred Ellis, investor at Octopus Ventures, believes the need for companies to be more strategic in the way they procure goods and services has now become a board-level priority and can be a source of competitive advantage.
“All over the world, companies are re-thinking how and where they procure goods and services. Supply chains are becoming more interconnected, global, dynamic, and unpredictable, increasing the risk of supply disruption, and associated financial losses,” he said.
Steven McGeagh, senior procurement manager at Huel, added: “There is an ever increasing amount of focus on risk management within supply chains and Contingent provides us with a platform to capture the key areas of risk.
“As we put more of a spotlight on ESG, the team at Contingent is continuously improving the platform, its features and coverage, which supports us as we continue to grow as a business.”